


Hollow Spaces

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [113]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 22:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9924458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: The mysterious energy that possessed Blaine has taken him away from his kids, and now they're left to deal with his absence.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an AU from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
>  In this particular instance of the universe, Blaine is a man who used to live in Adelar, a small village that got ravaged and burned to ashes by plunderers years ago. He used to teach survival and fighting techniques to the kids there, but when the plunderers came he only managed to save a handful of them, and they escaped with only their lives.

Leo sits down and sighs, and that's the first real sound coming out of his mouth today. He used to be so chatty once that people got annoyed at him all the time. He needed to speak – to make sounds, as Adam would say – as if he was scared of silence. Maybe he was, he doesn't really know. After what he had gone through when he was a kid – the attack of the plunderers and everything – he should have been scared of noise, if anything, but you never really know with trauma.

But that changed in the past few weeks.

A lot of things changed actually, and him being suddenly quieter is not even the worst. The whole house is quieter now, which is weird when only one person is missing and four are still there. They should be bound to make noise even just existing, and yet the house does sound uninhabited for most of the day. Adam doesn't practice with his sword anymore, or if it does, he goes deep down in the forest where they can't hear his grunts or the hiss of his blade. Annie casts only soundless spells, those she prefers when she's sad; water flowing, wind blowing, all things that passes through without leaving a trace unless she wants to. No explosions, no spectacular eruptions. Cody's cheerfulness is quieter too. His magic moans hushed to mere whimpers whenever Leo touches him. They are spent, all of them. A piece of them missing.

It's always easy to suffer through all this during the day, because they have things to do. They can't be distracted from this sense of uneasiness, but they are forced to soldier on because they've actual tasks to attend to and matters that fell into their hands and can't be left unattended.

Suddenly their world grew bigger and heavier without Blaine holding it up for them.

But it's a night that things get worse, that the weight of what's actually happening to them crashes down on them and forces them to look at it in the eyes, to acknowledge it. It's the empty seat at the table that makes it impossible for them to ignore the facts, even if they wanted to. Blaine's lost, or at least so far beyond their reach that it's impossible for them to bring him back. They tried – they will try again – but it's been pointless so far and it seems likely that it will be pointless again.

When the energy – the Goddess, as he called it – entered him, that was the moment he turned from them. It was gradual and they didn't realized it until it was too late. And at that point the man they knew was gone, turned into this new Messiah ready to avenge the people who had been wronged. One of the last things he told to them when he was still lucid enough to make any sense – or partially so – was that the Goddess had given him purpose.

But there is no purpose in blood, that is what he used to say.

As he stirs the soup, Leo watches Adam setting the table. He's only partially aware of the other two milling around the kitchen, helping out. Every night he's been watching Adam and Adam has always done what he was supposed to, ignoring – postponing – an endless discussion. But this is the night, and he knows it. They all know, the air is almost electric.

Adam sets down four plates and then stops.

They all stop. Annie looks worriedly from Adam to him. He knows she's ready to do something, whatever is needed, to stop what's coming. “Put down a plate for him,” Leo says, firmly.

Adam sighs, annoyed. Tired. “He's not coming, Leo.”  
He was always ready to justify Blaine, to see reason behind his actions. But when there was no more reason to see, he started – slowly – not to see Blaine either. And that's simply unacceptable.

“Put the plate down.”

“What's the point?”  
“Put the plate down!”

“He's not coming!” Adam screams, his voice as loud as possible to cover, to cancel, to annihilate Leo's words, because they must be so painful, even if he tries so hard not to show. But he puts the plate down, so hard that it cracks. So hard that it almost flies down the table. And then he storms out.

Annie tries to stop him, but Adam shrugs her off.  
She seems so sad, so utterly lost. 

Leo doesn't like to look at her when she's like this, he doesn't like to look at any of them, because he can see himself reflected in the others' eyes. He ignores Annie trying to talk this out or Cody's attempt to help him. He grabs the plate and places it where it is supposed to be.

At Blaine's place. For Blaine.

As water disperses if there's no bowl for it to fill, Blaine can't come back if there's no empty seat for him.


End file.
